Tip toe thru the garbage

We are into the second week of our "tsinalas" festival...
It celebrates our town's 4th anniversary in becoming a city...and also the mayor's sandal factory (although there are many other small sandal shops here, he owns the biggest one).

Every morning, we get up and jog in the center of town, which is one block away...until our city hall moves to it's new building in the new section of town, this is where we hold parties.

So every evening, there is another contest (kareoke one night, lip sinc another, gay dance festival another night, children's free baloon afternoon party etc.).

Last night was just a big party "with BOSE speakers"...we used to hear the music, but since the three story supermarket was built, it blocks the noise...except for firecrackers and traffic...

So when we jog, we tip toe thru the discarded papers, mango seeds, etc...Last night must have been really a success, because it was a real problem to find a path...

However, they were already starting to clean it up (if Lolo would jog at 6 am we wouldn't have a problem...but it's still cool at 5 am).

The rest of the news is in the papers: Dengue is still around, but not as bad...Bird flu, ditto...and lots of worry about AbuSaiff and Alqada...the last reports were that they sent 50 Alqada trained terrorists to 50 cities...no reports here since then, but given the 50 bombs that went off two days ago in Bengaladesh, it makes one wonder...

A bomb hit a shopping center in Zamboanga a few days ago...Of course, when you enter a mall here, they search your bags...but simple bribery to place a bomb at night would and has worked (which is why NW Airlines parks their planes in Taipei, not Manila, overnight)...

We have killings by communists in this area once or twice a month, but usually it's a politician, or a policeman...or a kidnapped businessman...not random terror...and the police and army usually kill a few of them in return...quagmire? It's been going on since the 1940's....

But there is a real worry about PROFESSIONAL terrorists hitting random civilians...so Gloria has been leaning over backward to try to settle the Mindinao uprising and kowtow to AlZahari's demands that Filippinos no longer find work in Iraq as cooks and cleaners.....remember, the Alqada bombed at least one airliner in the 1990's (probably three: one flight "disappeared" and another had a bomb go off on a runway, but usually only the Japanese bound flight is listed as terror). The Alqada also tried to kill the pope here (but couldn't get near due to crowds). So it's an ongoing problem...

In the meanwhile, politics goes on...Gloria probably has beaten impeachment...according to one ad by some lawyers, the old accusation didn't have enough information, but the new one has to be rejected because you can't petition twice in a year for impeachment, and if you try to wait a year with the accusations, there is a statue of limitations that doesn't let you do it.

Catch 22...

Of course, the tapes of Gloria planning to steal the election are sold all over, even if they were taped "illegally"...so the public is quite cynical about the whole thing...shame to Gloria, whose father actually cared about poor people...

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